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Company that owns Bushmaster brand has raked in huge profits since Sandy Hook school shooting

Connecticut School Sh_Deth.jpg

This image contained in the "Appendix to Report on the Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and 36 Yogananda St., Newtown, Connecticut On December 14, 2012" and released Monday, Nov. 25, 2013, by the Danbury, Conn., Stateâs Attorney shows the Bushmaster carbine found at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Adam Lanza opened fire inside the school killing 20 first-graders and six educators before killing himself as police arrived. (AP Photo/Office of the Connecticut State's Attorney Judicial District of Danbury)

In the nine months after the deaths of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the manufacturer of the Bushmaster XM-15 carbine earned profits that exceeded their numbers for the same period in 2012 188 times, according to a Mother Jones report.

The Bushmaster brand is owned by The Freedom Group, the nation's largest firearms and ammunition conglomerate. According to the report, the company earned more than $1 billion from the sale of guns and ammunition in the first three quarters of 2013 and expect to end the year with at least $250,000,000 more in sales.

The Mother Jones article said in net profits, the Freedom Group took in $94 million from January to September 2013. In the same period in 2012, profits were only $500,000. That translates to 2013 profits outpacing those before the Sandy Hook killings nearly 200 times over.

It's little wonder then that Cerberus Capital Management, the company which owns The Freedom Group, is hesitant to let it go. Four days after the shootings in Connecticut last year, the investor group pledged to sell the firearms conglomerate and divest their holdings in the Bushmaster brand. A year later, with profits at a record high, Cerberus still owns The Freedom Group.